Man as someone who played heavy from 2010 to 2017 I realized me and my friends were actually alot better at the game when it came to calling out what strats were good especially before the internet. Two of the four of us have passed away so this was a fun trip down memory lane. My boy wouldve been happy seeing how validated his take on Sabers was and calling out how busted Soul was. Thanks for the memories awesome vid!
Back in 2016 I was playing so much goat that I asked myself “what would be the best retro formats other than goat”. Over the next few years I built decks to be able to play any format from 2004-2014 and oh boy did I love watching what would happen to the value of cards I bought for pennies
Facts dude I got into edison and goat right before the big boom a few years ago and I built so many decks for cheap and now when I need another copy of heavy storm or some would be penny staple I have to pay $2-$5 a copy for some of them Now the bulk boxes at our game stores are completely picked through. A friend of mine found 12 trap dustshoots for 25 cents a piece and now we can barely find MST's in them. It's great that the stores can finally make back some money from all those old cards that were just sitting there for years though
@@ianthefifth7790 yeah they really need to print products specifically geared towards time wizard. Like an all foil set or something with popular cards from whatever formats they’re hosting in their time wizard events that year.Stores can make money off of selling them, players get easier access, win win. It’s crazy seeing the price of cards like dustshoot and royal oppression that were pennies. I remember getting ab zero for $0.48.
I feel like the main problem with a lot of Historic Formats is a small bit of problem cards that just mess up the whole thing, but if you remove those things then you're just changing it into a Custom Format. I personally don't have a problem with that, but purists who want to explore a format to its fullest potential are going to be up in arms over those kinds of changes.
If the number of people you gain from eliminating the big problem is more than the number of people you lose due to "it being different," it's probably worth it as at least a side version of the format.
Seriously, why can't we just agree to ban Cyber Stein in Reaper? If we do that I feel it could be a nice alternative to Goat if not for that one ridiculous card that we all agree single handedly ruins the otherwise great format.
@@Excellsionthe problem is that people disagree on which cards to remove. By removing problem cards you splinter the community. Take Edison minus dustshoot, brain control, future fusion, dark armed, black whirlwind, deck devastation virus, royal oppression, super rejuvenation, poison draw frog… etc. Any combination of these cards could be banned and people will disagree on which ones are deserving. The historical accuracy is appealed to as a way to have a ruleset that everyone can agree on.
It was really fun seeing you go through all these formats, especially seeing you highlight some that people rarely talk about! As someone who has been doing deep dives into the DM era formats for the last two years I have some slight nitpicks about those ranking though. Firstly about Treasure format, while it definitely isn't everyone's cup of tea the handrips aren't actually as bad as they would be later in the game's history. This is mainly due to Sangan and Witch both being at 2, which enables you to recover some card advantage if you're handripped. Not saying it's on the same tier as Critter, but the community consensus is definitely that it's better than unplayable garbage tier. With Yata Format I think you may be overestimating the power of the Yata lock. Yes it is incredibly powerful if you can pull it off, but it's often difficult to set up a pure Yata lock, which gives your opponent a chance to play out of it a lot of the time. Also, while hand control is a great deck, there have been plenty of other strategies to contest its dominance that play in different ways. Gearfried, for example, is Tier 1 not because of Smoke Grenade (many builds don't even play that card) but because of being able to use Blast With Chain as an interruption. Honestly I think Yata format has arguably the most growth potential out of the DM era, since the games are often very back and forth and the meta is still very much undefined. Lastly, for Chaos Format, while it is tier 0 and that isn't everyone's thing, the Chaos Yata Lock almost never comes up any more. Many decks have even taken to cutting Yata entirely in favor of more versatile cards since the combo just isn't consistent enough. Anyways, sorry for the long wall of text there, just want to put that out there so people don't get discouraged from actually trying out those formats. The DM era often gets a bad rap and while much of its reputation is deserved, it still has a plethora of formats that I think people would enjoy if they give them a chance. This was a great video despite my nitpicks and I hope it put some of the more obscure but great formats on people's radar!
Eh not really, the only innovations come in Goat variants like Warrior or Cyber. I myself still innovate and discover new things playing Cyber Goat, but Classic Goat is basically 100% solved to where Chaos, Warrior, and Goat are the gold standard Big 3 decks.
Bolonga Format would definitely fall under Solid Format, the top decks did a good job of filtering out a lot of problematic shit. It was so refreshing to not have to worry about cards like D Barrier or Shifter every game, and the meta was so diverse.
Not sure what you think the differences between Fire Water and Vegas are. Fire Water format also has Silent Honor Ark. The main differences between Fire Water and Vegas are a ban list that put Infernity Barrier to 1, a Mermail card to one (level 3 that can summon a Mermail or water from grave under a condition to 1), Coach Soldier Wolfbark to 1 and Rekindling to 1. Also a mini set called Premium Gold was released that added a few extra deck cards to the game. Heartlandraco and Beelze are the only two cards I can think of from it that saw* any play in Vegas format.
@@geek593 Dragon rulers being considered a skillful format like predates MBT and Joshua Schmidt praising the format in the modern era. It predates mbts oldest public vids on his channel even (which are from 2016 as of writing this in case he changes which vids are public in the future again). You can not like Dragon ruler and you can not like MBT and Joshua Schmidt but they aren't like to blame for this opinion. It would exist without either of them.
Me personally im having a TON of fun with the NECH format (november 2014) but with emptiness at 0, it's something completely different and fun, it's a continuous back and forth on both sides of the field. Amazinf
I really hope Nekroz post Djinn ban format becomes popular in the future. I really love Nekroz without the garbage that was Djinn, and that format has a lot of potential. I'd love to play it irl again.
Silent Honor Ark exists in Fire-Water as well. The only difference between FW and Vegas is the banlist that nerfs Mermail and Fire Fist slightly plus some semi-relevant cards from Premium Gold, which means Vegas plays a LOT more like FW/Meadowlands than like HAT.
Quick point, Long Beach was the last format with priority, not Shockwave. I appreciate that you spoke highly of Dino Rabbit format but it wasn't really a triangle format. If anything, there's 10 or so decks around the same power level that can absolutely beat each other, some just have less bad matchups and are more consistent. The reality with Dino Rabbit being a popular deck comes from the ease of play and older players, at the time, not being very good at the game. Overall though, it was the beginning of really good Yu-Gi-Oh imo and I think everyone should try it out.
Strongly disagree about Goat being solved, but do appreciate your comments about Stein and Cat not being a problem in Goat. A lot of people are used to hearing “X card wasn’t played at the time, but got played later, then became a game-breaking staple in retro play that everyone plays at the maximum copies,” which is often hyperbolic. A lot of people who’ve only heard other Yugitibers talk about Goats overestimate the power or universality of cards like Upstart or Solemn in Goats, for example. It’s nice to hear someone push back on that way of thinking. Even Last Warrior, which you mention by name, sees little play in Goats.
I understand the desire to play a retro format from an exact moment in time, but its a shame there aren't formats with new ban lists to improve them. For example, Reaper Format with Cyber Stein banned. I'm working on DM+ formats that incorporate newer cards (mostly focusing on retrains and excluding Synchros, XYZs, and Links) to play with friends. It would be nice to see this cards considered for retro play going forward.
If you like chaos monsters and a slower more skillful playstyle that is a war of resource attrition then Goat if for you. If you hate being patient and if you hate chaos monsters then you will hate goat. I personally do not like Edison because I do not like black wing and royal oppression is an exceptionaly horrible experience only exasperated by the interaction with vayu.
Tbh you shouldnt have just speedruned through the early 2018 extreme force/pendulum format. This was before firewall combo stuff was prominent and there is a lot of creative deck building involved and tons of stuff historically topped. You could legit take graydle to regionals and do well or iirc burning abyss won a YCS. The only firewall combo deck that was there was world chalice, an actually pretty cool and creative deck that required tons of skill to play and the player who made it was a good deck builder. It's a format that should be reconsidered at least because there was a lot of goofy stuff running around and I had tons of fun during it. There wasn't a deck that just choked the life out of the format.
@@warenfetischismus3649 yeah but it wasnt bad. Pendulum lost to 1 hand trap and if u interrupted their FTK somehow with a veiler or ash or droll or ogre or just about anything they didnt have any followup which is why some pendulum decks didnt play the FTK. It's obviously not the best format ever but it had a lot of things playable, is unexplored and could be fun to revisit. Also there is a lot of creative deck building that went on at the time and can still probably be done, which is something you cant say about a format like goat.
i love Perfect Circle format, im very happy to see it gaining slightly more attention recently. and yeah i agree Starstrike should be explored more, its one of the few formats that has always looked very interesting to me but i have never really seen anyone talk about it or play it nowadays.
My problem with Delinquent Duo has been my issue with a lot of high price cards and that's if you need them for a deck, because everyone plays Delinquent, Graceful, and Pot, it makes playing it IRL a nightmare. I still need a Delinquent Duo and it's still a $20 card.
At least the saving grace is that (1) Duo is at 1 for much of its history, so you only need the one copy, and (2) retro format ban lists will never change, so that Duo will never get banned.
Critter format or yugi kaiba is what i use to teach brand new players the very basics, and you still learn things like card advantage, conserving resources, and getting reads on the opponent, all in baby steps. And its very nostalgic and everyone recognizes the cards. But after a few games you gotta move up to goat format then edison. I still need to make a few tengu and hat decks for that next step up.
Hats a really good format to build rogue decks, since games tend to be slower, but the power level is high if you get plays through. No heavy and peoplr not wanting to random mst your backrow helps slow rogue and not many main deck mst helps combo rogue.
Interesting point on Zoo. Sorry im so late to the discussion. There is 2 formats post Maximum Crisis for Zoo. 1. Is Fusion Sub Zoo which is your YCS Pitt format and it was obnoxius. Fusion Sub combo wasnt just annoying, it was what introduced us into the era of playing 12+ hand traps in main decks which wasnt heard of prior. The NAWCQ format, was post Norden ban and was actually quite fun and skill intensive.
Chimeratech is actually a very diverse and mostly healthy format in between Cyber Stein and Crush Card Virus. The OTK is not an extremely consistent deck and people moved away from it. There are Monarch, Gadget and Control decks that make things very interesting, especially with Burn not being particularly good. It is definitely better then many of the formats in this video :)
Ever since me and my friends got into Goat years ago, we’ve always played the Cyber version, mainly because I play Cyber Dragons in the TCG and played them as a kid so they’ve always been my main card. I love Cyber Format, I stand by it and think it’s the best variant of Goat. Cyber-Stein becomes usable, I run a Machine-heavy OTK deck with Reflect Bounder, Cyber Dragon and its Fusions, Power Bond, Limiter Removal, Cyber-Stein etc. but I also play a Goat Control engine to grind game with if I can’t pull off a quick OTK. I will admit I haven’t experimented much with any other formats that come right after and I’d love to try some that come right after Goat since they got rid of a lot of the big problems with Goat.
To be specific, the problem with Tier 0 formats in a modern sense is *that's what you're stuck with.* When it comes to retro formats, you have all the choice in the world. Tier zero retro formats should be judged primarily on how fun the mirror match is, because if you don't like that mirror match, you simply don't play that format. If you DO like the mirror match, you'll probably appreciate the format's consistency!
To be clear, I recognize the exceptions in this video - there is respect given to Dragon Rulers, for example - but you've still leaned too heavily on it, largely failing to explain why the TeleDAD, Six Sam, Dark world, etc. Tier Zero formats are bad in and of themselves.
We forgot YCS San Jose. I consider it an Edison format for the Arc V era. No Djinn, still have Construct, Kozmo is out, but it’s not as favored as clown blade. It’s fantastic
UDS Kissimmee 2017, post-Zoo hits, post-CODE, but pre-CIBR is a pretty cool format imo. Decode Talker was a card that was unironically used, and pendulum magician was a thing that was somewhat fair.
Windup format is actually way better than dino rabbit format. Shock lock is not nearly as toxic as handrip, future fusion, consistent dino rabbit. Windup format scales the best decks from dino rabbit format to where other decks can compete which is good for the format.
Wind Up format is rad. I don't understand why anyone would prefer Dino Rabbit Format. Every top deck at that time was degenerate. Laggia set five, Hand loop, Dragonfly combo, etc. absolutely miserable format.
I disagree. All the decks in DR format can be checked and very rarely do the big wombo combos go off without answers. Wind-Up format is really just Wind-Up + a bunch of other decks that are fighting to be a distant second.
@@kittycat2983 of course they can "get checked" you can main deck triple Maxx C and Veiler in both formats. The Wind Up format decks are just strictly weaker than their counterpart in DR Format.
@@feelingrizzly1515 strictly weaker which in turn makes the format more polarizing. Wind-Up is unequivocally the best deck in Wind-Up format whereas it seriously contends with 3-4 others in Dino Rabbit format. And to your other post: I don't think many of the decks in Dino Rabbit are "degenerate" at all. Sure, you've got the Wind-Up loop but that's kind of it and that's only really a problem if it resolves which oftentimes it didn't. Laggia is a hard one time negate and Inzektors are an incredibly fragile deck. The majority of games won in DR format are through grinding out resources and making good plays and trades. That's just great Yu-Gi-Oh. DR gets a lot of hate towards it because people have this vision of what it was 12 years ago but the reality is that the format is diverse, plays well, and was the beginning of more intricate and complicated styles of play for the game.
With how many broken formats there were right before TOSS and the rather hand-wringy... "I mean... I GUESS it's solid" it makes that entire era feel like the Master Rule 4 equivalent of that AVGN "IT'S NOT SHIT!!!" meme.
I feel like there is a decent few formats, that could be really fun if you could adjust them. In general there are 3 things I think could be done to most of the A tier formats to make them really fun: 1. Ban certain unfun staple cards like soul charge, vanity's and smoke grenade. 2. Give certain decks, that got murdered some pieces back. I bet you could make a really cool True draco Necros Zoo Pen magician format, if you can find a power sweet spot between them. 3. Legalize decks, that were released too late and never saw any play, because by the time they came out they were underpowered. Let flower cardians or weather painters loose in fire water format and see what happens. There are so many cool decks, that never got to be anything more than rogue or even worse, they deserve some shine.
I've been championing perfect circle format since its basically goats format diversity wise with none of the issues. Yeah a bunch of decks are probably gonna play some repeating stuff but that's almost all formats where there are repeating cards. People should totally figure more stuff out for it.
@rapalborde5211 the ocg were ahead like 4-6months in sets and they had cards that we didn't get for years like blue eyes ultimate and other ocg exclusives
This was a trip down memory lane from September 11 to Spyral format, tier 0 spyral in late 2017 was what made me quit Yu-Gi-Oh forever, that format was so toxic and unfun that it made me not want to touch the game again, and im kinda glad i didn't other than retro fornats considering the chaos that happened afterwards
Ruler formats are just top tier. Or rather, either top tier or unplayable, depending on what you like. But I without a doubt have played the most Yu-Gi-Oh around Tachyon and it was awesome and I assume it's even better now. I do feel like it has the perfect balance between 5DS and current metas, can do a lot of cool stuff and it doesn't take 20 minutes to do a combo, and as mentioned, very skill intensive
Fiber format which it seems like you missed is a format that also has 2 graceful and it is much better than joey-pegasus. Also i stand by the stein era formats actually being a lot of fun. Sure stein is pretty degenerate but it being around adds a fun mini game of getting your opponent below 5000 and while getting steind feels bad, the decks that rely heavily on stein brick pretty often and so plenty of decks play very minimal stein or no stein at all.
Solid recap of what happend over the years. I feel like you are a little biased to extreme diverse formats with to much hate against tier 0 and rock-paper-scissor formats but this is a pretty solid list. I guess i am biased aswell. I remember most of the formats but back in the day not everybody had the money for stuff like 3 DaD or 3 Tour guide so the actual offline metagame was a little bit different. Stuff like Tengu format without people running 3 tourguides in every deck was way better then the Tengu plant format now where everybody has 3 tour guides in their deck. The Tengu plant format we played back in the day was a fixed version of Librarian format. This format was amazing with Librarian and Formula at one and Heavy storm back in the format. Normal Summoning Tengu, Rai-Oh or Tour Guide every turn is way more controlling then the metagame we faced back in the day. Junk Doppel plants were so much fun.
There’s no way Frog FTK format isn’t in the bottom of unplayable. And for the reasons you mentioned about Gravekeeper it has to be DREV>Starstrike March 2012 format is also hot garbage. The wind up hand loop is why retro formats even emerged in the first place. The revival of Goat format came about because people hated the meta at the time. Lastly I'm sure if Meadowlands was heavily played, I can't see a world where full power Mermail isn't definitively the best deck. I think one of the other closer Zexal formats like Fire-Water or Vegas might be the best one for the era. Agreed with you that HAT is overrated; Soul Charge is a card that shouldn't exist let alone at 3 and I don't find playing with/against the hyper control Artifact deck to be particularly fun.
The problem with DREV format is that it's pretty much just 'edison with less variety and sackier decks'. Duality/Warning largely concentrate power on the decks that were already good in edison (BW variants/Heros), and add Infernity (which literally no one is happy about). X-Sabers is the only actually positive addition, but you lose a lot of decks in the transition in favor of the pushed decks, and even X-Sabers is a little on the sacky side. STBL is where new decks actually started to show up. You got Bulb, Karakuri, GK Recruiter, Tuning, Formula Synchron enabling Water Synchro, etc. It's just a very mediocre format because it has no real distinguishing aspects. If you wanted a format with BWs/Frogs/QD/Plants, Edison is better. If you wanted Sabers/Infernity/Gks, play Tengu. If you want a late-stage synchro format with high diversity, it's worse than Edison or STBL format.
@@Floatstonemafia Well I think the point is because it's post-Edison but still has a lot of overlap with it, it's still a pretty good format. There's a few pros, namely 0 Substitoad and 1 Whirlwind. Imo GK is a toxic enough deck where despite the new decks in STBL, it's a negative play experience. What is a neg for both of these is the banning of Heavy Storm. The Sept. 2010 list was very controversial due to that. Agreed that there is no reason to really play either of these when you could just play Tengu Plant.
I know the whole thing is "play things as they were." But: So many of these are one change away from being way way better... why not do it? Edit: 2:01:15 So apparently some do... Resume original comment. I.e. play revised Cyber format where you just ban Cyberstein, which everyone agrees is a problem, and that the format would be better without it. At least in non Konami events, there is nothing stopping people. Just label events extremely clearly: "Insert format, X card banned" Like, on Smogon, retro pokemon formats get banlist changes.
@momiji236 I addressed that in the first sentence. But the "one big issue" in a bunch of these formats makes *a bunch of other people not want to play them.* At the end of the day, I think what people want to play a lot of the time is "good Yu-Gi-Oh." So it seems stupid to me for people backing Reaper or other formats with one big issue to not run events with the one big issue taken out. Except at official Time Wizard events, the fans set the rules. A small compromise would actually get more people playing the format. Apparently, we even have empirical evidence that it works because the Nekroz format community decided Djinn needs to go and run events without it. It is something to try. There's also nothing stopping pure retro formats and slightly revised retro formats from coexisting. "This event is Reaper format exactly as it was historically." "This event is Reaper format, BUT Cyberstein is banned." Heck, people sign up to play the weird "Goat" time wizard events with Cydra legal because to them, it's still appealing despite not being "quite right."
Couple of comments: STBL format is hugely underexplored and was incredibly diverse at the time. There were also other fantastic lists like Karakuri Machina Plant that were floating around too. The big turn off that format was the lack of heavy storm, but otherwise great. The only danger here I think is a runaway GK format, but I'm not sure about that, it's Saber MU wasn't great, frognarch might have been an issue , etc. It's one of my favorite formats honestly. Games ended up being pretty grindy due to the lack of heavy storm. I think it steps on Edison's toes too much to ever gain mainstream popularity, but I think it's actually a little better than Edison in a lot of ways. STOR Six Sams were not tier 0 in the TCG, even with 3 gateway. Tier .5 ish. The format was awful, but it was a two deck format. Six Sams were the best deck, but GKs could keep pace, had a couple of advantages vs them, and could be built to anti-meta Six Sams. What ends up happening in that match up is a dick measure contest of who gets to stop the other person from playing, and whoever goes first wins like 80% of the time, but GKs could absolutely blow Six Sams out with a turn 1 Royal Tribute, and in general Six Sams had a hard time going second into GKs. The deck often struggled to get over a Necrovalley pumped spy, and Descendant was one of the few reliable outs to Shien. Everything else was meme tier against triple gateway six sams, but this works in GK's favor given that it bumped off a lot of GK's bad match ups. GKs could play the Spellbooks to Six Sam's Dragon Rulers - one is clearly a way stronger deck, but the one dumb thing the other deck does is just good enough to anti-meta the big dog. Dino Rabbit/Chaos Dragons/Full Power Inzektors/WU hand loop was a horrifically bad format. Easily one of the worst in the games history. The diversity was the only thing somewhat redeeming, but it was immediately negated by all of the big decks being completely miserable to play against. Every single deck in that format was not trying to play yugioh at all. Chaos Dragons were trying to OTK you if you couldn't interact with them, WUs were trying to FTK you with the hand loop, Dino Rabbit was trying to stop you from playing at all, Inzektors were the closest thing to a fair deck, and that was a super, super messed up fair deck that turned one dragonfly in to leveling your whole board and generating xyzs. WU Format is a hugely underrated format. Lots of cool stuff going on with the WU deck in general, and Dino Rabbit/Inzektors were much more interesting to deal with.
Bit disappointed to see no mention of nimble in the dragon rulers/mermail area as that was my pet deck at the time, but I suppose it just wasn't quite that good.
>Meadowlands over Tengu for "big 3" consideration THANK YOU. Its not just BLS either, Dark Hole is also a washout card I loathe in TP. Meadowlands is the most balanced and open that Zexal has to offer and a true representation of XYZs.
Dark Hole is pretty damn fine in Tengu lol. Very healthy card, so much so I wonder how early they could have unbanned it and it have been fine. Almost certainly way earlier. The real problem with Tengu Plant format is largely Maxx C, Monster Reborn, Dustshoot, BLS, Thunder King Rai-Oh. Those cards are the ones that create a large number of completely uninteractive games and heavily warp the whole format.
Glad you put the tear mirror haters in their place. Never got to experience it in the TCG so it's a little different but the month that I got to play ishizu tear mirrors in MD was some of the most fun I had. Both players playing during each other's turns and trying desperately to stop each other from setting up or getting to Dweller. Shit would get to chain link 10+ regularly
Yeah Tear format is amazing. By far the most skillful mirror match in the history of the game, the amount of required brain power is just beyond any imagination. It's so hard to resolve chain link 10 correctly when you are not playing on a simulator. Anyone who is looking for a true brain exercise should try out this format.
It's a format that appeals to exactly Jesse Kotton and people who think they're better at the game than they actually are. "Skill intensive" also feels like a bad label to me since it tests skills that are a impenetrable frustration wall for 99% of the playerbase, not applicable to any other format, invalidate all decks that aren't Tear by nature of the mirrored mill, and have too much required tracking to not end up with procedural errors. It's not a good format, the mirror is a clusterfuck, and navigating an entire game's worth of interactions off the mirror mill isn't fun. The Ishizu monsters were gakekeepers in the same way Djinn was, but Tear has fart sniffing sycophants who think invalidating the entire rest of the card pool is fine because you need adderall to play it. Just like the Dragon Ruler mirror before it, everyone says it's the cultured man's Yugioh format but no one is going back to play it.
@@geek593THANK. YOU. I wanted to get back into paper yugioh around this time and absolutely just fucked off until mid-late 2023 after IshTear got hit and Kash got a vasectomy.
Yeah Tear Mirrors are mega fun. I can understand that outside the mirror the format sucked because everything else was so much far behind (which is a perfectly valid complaint tbf) but I also hate it when people just disregard the quality of mirror matches during that format.
Edison is close enough to Pelé's actual name, Pelé being that brazilian soccer player that arguably was the best ever at it. So it's fitting that Edison should be the best Yu-Gi-Oh format 😂.
Goat was great until people realized burn was one of the best strategies. Any format where burn is viable is not a good format. Nobody has fun playing burn or against burn.
I mean, if nobody has fun playing it (not against it, but actually piloting it), then it shouldn't actually be played, so someone must be having fun. I do agree tho, burn really turns me off from Goats.
Burn matchup usually isnt that bad as long as u have sidedeck options vs it, burn usually has considerably easier time winning game 1 than game 2 and 3 cuz dust tornados and mystik woks come in vs it. actually can have some fun games vs burn still as well and the rescue cat burn builds especially actually take a bit of skill to play still. I wouldnt just dismiss goats outright cuz burn is playable.
Because no one has such authority that the rest of the community should respect lol. You can make a gentleman's aggrement with your friend, but defaulting to the actual banlists of the time makes everything a whole lot easier. If a card makes a format awful, people will generally just not play it rather than waste their time trying to get everyone to agree on a custom banlist.
it sucks that so many formats can be bumped up a tier or 2 with a few simple obvious fixes. extremely obvious problem cards like mystic mine and scythe and vanity and shock. just ban those cards. it's super easy.
I'm rather surprised you ignored the fact that DAD's first format, Gladiator and TeleDAD all had more than 1 emergency ban list come out....all three of which were because of DAD. Gyzarus was a problem in GB format but you do touch on how it wasn't the worst thing since it really wasn't. Even the crippling it did to DAD didn't help though...as TeleDAD would not only prove but make even WORSE. I was playing so much during those and well beyond and I very clearly remember especially when DAD first came out and TeleDAD having minimum THREE emergency lists, Tele iirc had what 4-6 by the end of it? They were awful but a lot more fun than a lot of other formats ironically, GB specifically when you were seeing Gadgets being used. Also Imperial is I'm sorry unplayable garbage...that's when Yata was hands down its worst despite Yata format being named after the silly bird. Most of these otherwise I'm in the same mindset as you XD
Tear 0 format was so bad it made me quit the game may be skillful but god it was sooo boring, link zoo was one of my favourites formats it actually had a very skillful mirror match but most importantly it was reeaaally fun to play
Teledad format is better than Edison from a modern perspective. Depth of field of decks is a representation of a bad format, not a good one. Still like Edison btw, but from any bit of competitive standpoint it's so annoying to play.
More decks playable makes for a worse format? You better explain why and you better have a good reason, because right now it comes across like "boohoo I only have room for five 3-ofs in my side deck I can't slot in cards to blow out every deck down to rogue tier".
@@maxmercurythemm827 When everything is viable, you can't plan for anything. Strategizing becomes a mess and it's just matchup fishing. It's so much more random because the things you will face is so much more random. Being able to viably play rogue is not the sign of a good format. I am not talking about casual btw, you can play whatever you want for any reason in casual play. I am talking about tournament play which there are a lot of tournaments for older formats.
@@N4N0_21 The key bit that you're missing is that this is a TCG, even when you play it competitively. TCGs are meant to have numerous viable decks at any given time, that's the whole point of constructed deck building with such a vast card pool. It may result in a "less competitive" environment overall, per your standards, but that is the expected compromise of competing in a TCG. If you really want to water down the variety so bad in order to make for the most equal, skill based competitive game possible, at that point you may as well just play chess.
@@Frogleeoh nowhere does it say that a tcg is supposed to have multiple viable decks at any given time. The yugioh TCG right now has a great format and there is really only 1 viable deck. I'm not against diverse formats, but to say diverse formats are good and tier 0 formats are bad is short sighted and dumb. Like I said, I like Edison, but it's not even close to the best format ever.
@@N4N0_21 Nowhere do I say that it is said anywhere that TCGs are supposed to have multiple viable decks. Rather, I was saying that it's the strong inherent implication of TCGs, hence the emphasis on personal deck construction combined with the vastly expansive card pool. It may not explicitly "say" it anywhere, but, especially with Yu-Gi-Oh specifically, the core structure of the genre heavily brings with it the expectations of a varied environment.
Nah that deck is crazy strong and it's a good thing it's not allowed in most Tengu Plant Tournaments. It's not quite as good as Agents/Tengu, but people have made that deck a lot better with the benefit of modern deckbuilding. The old versions were bloated messes running a bunch of cards you have no business running (any dark world monster besides beige/snoww/grapha/brow, sangan, fabled raven, not using upstarts/into the voids, etc), which is why it never topped. They were normal summon heavy, filled with a lot of gimmicky cards like mass discard normal summons and greedy cards like Reckless Greed. The modern, slimmed down, lean mean virus making machine is a total menace to the format. It's the tengu equivalent of Dragon Turbo - it's probably not the outright best deck, but it's good enough and so frustrating to deal with that the format is way better if no one plays it. Tengu Plant just benefits from the most commonly used ruleset excluding it. But in the few tournaments that allow it to be used, it does win outright.
Man as someone who played heavy from 2010 to 2017 I realized me and my friends were actually alot better at the game when it came to calling out what strats were good especially before the internet. Two of the four of us have passed away so this was a fun trip down memory lane. My boy wouldve been happy seeing how validated his take on Sabers was and calling out how busted Soul was. Thanks for the memories awesome vid!
Sorry for your losses
Back in 2016 I was playing so much goat that I asked myself “what would be the best retro formats other than goat”. Over the next few years I built decks to be able to play any format from 2004-2014 and oh boy did I love watching what would happen to the value of cards I bought for pennies
Substitoad stonks
Facts dude I got into edison and goat right before the big boom a few years ago and I built so many decks for cheap and now when I need another copy of heavy storm or some would be penny staple I have to pay $2-$5 a copy for some of them
Now the bulk boxes at our game stores are completely picked through. A friend of mine found 12 trap dustshoots for 25 cents a piece and now we can barely find MST's in them. It's great that the stores can finally make back some money from all those old cards that were just sitting there for years though
@@ianthefifth7790 yeah they really need to print products specifically geared towards time wizard. Like an all foil set or something with popular cards from whatever formats they’re hosting in their time wizard events that year.Stores can make money off of selling them, players get easier access, win win. It’s crazy seeing the price of cards like dustshoot and royal oppression that were pennies. I remember getting ab zero for $0.48.
I feel like the main problem with a lot of Historic Formats is a small bit of problem cards that just mess up the whole thing, but if you remove those things then you're just changing it into a Custom Format. I personally don't have a problem with that, but purists who want to explore a format to its fullest potential are going to be up in arms over those kinds of changes.
If the number of people you gain from eliminating the big problem is more than the number of people you lose due to "it being different," it's probably worth it as at least a side version of the format.
Seriously, why can't we just agree to ban Cyber Stein in Reaper? If we do that I feel it could be a nice alternative to Goat if not for that one ridiculous card that we all agree single handedly ruins the otherwise great format.
Purists are a minority vs the new majority of those who want to join a retro format community.
@@Frogleeoh add to this cat format without dark strike fighter
@@Excellsionthe problem is that people disagree on which cards to remove. By removing problem cards you splinter the community.
Take Edison minus dustshoot, brain control, future fusion, dark armed, black whirlwind, deck devastation virus, royal oppression, super rejuvenation, poison draw frog… etc.
Any combination of these cards could be banned and people will disagree on which ones are deserving. The historical accuracy is appealed to as a way to have a ruleset that everyone can agree on.
It was really fun seeing you go through all these formats, especially seeing you highlight some that people rarely talk about! As someone who has been doing deep dives into the DM era formats for the last two years I have some slight nitpicks about those ranking though.
Firstly about Treasure format, while it definitely isn't everyone's cup of tea the handrips aren't actually as bad as they would be later in the game's history. This is mainly due to Sangan and Witch both being at 2, which enables you to recover some card advantage if you're handripped. Not saying it's on the same tier as Critter, but the community consensus is definitely that it's better than unplayable garbage tier.
With Yata Format I think you may be overestimating the power of the Yata lock. Yes it is incredibly powerful if you can pull it off, but it's often difficult to set up a pure Yata lock, which gives your opponent a chance to play out of it a lot of the time. Also, while hand control is a great deck, there have been plenty of other strategies to contest its dominance that play in different ways. Gearfried, for example, is Tier 1 not because of Smoke Grenade (many builds don't even play that card) but because of being able to use Blast With Chain as an interruption. Honestly I think Yata format has arguably the most growth potential out of the DM era, since the games are often very back and forth and the meta is still very much undefined.
Lastly, for Chaos Format, while it is tier 0 and that isn't everyone's thing, the Chaos Yata Lock almost never comes up any more. Many decks have even taken to cutting Yata entirely in favor of more versatile cards since the combo just isn't consistent enough.
Anyways, sorry for the long wall of text there, just want to put that out there so people don't get discouraged from actually trying out those formats. The DM era often gets a bad rap and while much of its reputation is deserved, it still has a plethora of formats that I think people would enjoy if they give them a chance. This was a great video despite my nitpicks and I hope it put some of the more obscure but great formats on people's radar!
Yata Format is great!
@@HalfarTenguFormat I 100% agree, it may actually be my favorite DM Era format!
Its mine for sure! @@ygofrom0
Critter Vs Yata if you had to suggest one to someone wanting to dabble more in DM?
@@ygofrom0Yata best DM format ez
Goat Format is still changing every day. People are still innovating with the format.
Eh not really, the only innovations come in Goat variants like Warrior or Cyber. I myself still innovate and discover new things playing Cyber Goat, but Classic Goat is basically 100% solved to where Chaos, Warrior, and Goat are the gold standard Big 3 decks.
I destroyed the last tournament with stein-horus beat down. It's not nearly as solved as people claim.
Felt like a lot of format is fine if you gentleman out 1 to 2 cards out the format.
Unless your name is Patrick Hoban...
Yeah, but in that case it would be a custom format
@@edymiguel4247 no it wouldn't
Yeah like siding out your Djinn in Nekroz Format but then also siding in another copy of Djinn at the same time
Bolonga Format would definitely fall under Solid Format, the top decks did a good job of filtering out a lot of problematic shit. It was so refreshing to not have to worry about cards like D Barrier or Shifter every game, and the meta was so diverse.
Not sure what you think the differences between Fire Water and Vegas are.
Fire Water format also has Silent Honor Ark. The main differences between Fire Water and Vegas are a ban list that put Infernity Barrier to 1, a Mermail card to one (level 3 that can summon a Mermail or water from grave under a condition to 1), Coach Soldier Wolfbark to 1 and Rekindling to 1.
Also a mini set called Premium Gold was released that added a few extra deck cards to the game. Heartlandraco and Beelze are the only two cards I can think of from it that saw* any play in Vegas format.
Is that it? I thought the banlist separated Fire Water-Vegas format with HAT format
this man considering putting dragon rulers in the same tier as edison is a calamity.
It's the weird MBT and Joshua Schmidt approved take that Dragon Ruler and Tear formats were great even though people hate them.
@@geek593 Dragon rulers being considered a skillful format like predates MBT and Joshua Schmidt praising the format in the modern era. It predates mbts oldest public vids on his channel even (which are from 2016 as of writing this in case he changes which vids are public in the future again). You can not like Dragon ruler and you can not like MBT and Joshua Schmidt but they aren't like to blame for this opinion. It would exist without either of them.
Me personally im having a TON of fun with the NECH format (november 2014) but with emptiness at 0, it's something completely different and fun, it's a continuous back and forth on both sides of the field. Amazinf
I really hope Nekroz post Djinn ban format becomes popular in the future. I really love Nekroz without the garbage that was Djinn, and that format has a lot of potential. I'd love to play it irl again.
Silent Honor Ark exists in Fire-Water as well. The only difference between FW and Vegas is the banlist that nerfs Mermail and Fire Fist slightly plus some semi-relevant cards from Premium Gold, which means Vegas plays a LOT more like FW/Meadowlands than like HAT.
Plus HAT is defined by Soul Charge and Artifacts. Deck building and play patterns are wildly different due to these additions.
Quick point, Long Beach was the last format with priority, not Shockwave.
I appreciate that you spoke highly of Dino Rabbit format but it wasn't really a triangle format. If anything, there's 10 or so decks around the same power level that can absolutely beat each other, some just have less bad matchups and are more consistent. The reality with Dino Rabbit being a popular deck comes from the ease of play and older players, at the time, not being very good at the game.
Overall though, it was the beginning of really good Yu-Gi-Oh imo and I think everyone should try it out.
critter is really fun and underrated. it's skillful and decks/techs are more diverse than you'd think
Strongly disagree about Goat being solved, but do appreciate your comments about Stein and Cat not being a problem in Goat. A lot of people are used to hearing “X card wasn’t played at the time, but got played later, then became a game-breaking staple in retro play that everyone plays at the maximum copies,” which is often hyperbolic. A lot of people who’ve only heard other Yugitibers talk about Goats overestimate the power or universality of cards like Upstart or Solemn in Goats, for example. It’s nice to hear someone push back on that way of thinking.
Even Last Warrior, which you mention by name, sees little play in Goats.
Goats is 100% solved. Chaos turbo is tier zero
@@jondough3339 It hasn’t been for months. The deck is undeniably strong, but there are plenty of strong decks with real game against it.
@@aidanyoung9133 wrong
@@jondough3339 Chaos turbo was 38% of top cut at the last big tournament.
"Dragon Rulers is undeniably strong, but Spellbook and Lswarm have a chance against it" 😂
I understand the desire to play a retro format from an exact moment in time, but its a shame there aren't formats with new ban lists to improve them. For example, Reaper Format with Cyber Stein banned.
I'm working on DM+ formats that incorporate newer cards (mostly focusing on retrains and excluding Synchros, XYZs, and Links) to play with friends. It would be nice to see this cards considered for retro play going forward.
thank you for making this, one of my favorite yugioh related videos ever
ThelawYGO:Stand proud you were strong
If you like chaos monsters and a slower more skillful playstyle that is a war of resource attrition then Goat if for you. If you hate being patient and if you hate chaos monsters then you will hate goat.
I personally do not like Edison because I do not like black wing and royal oppression is an exceptionaly horrible experience only exasperated by the interaction with vayu.
Same. Despite my love of quickdraw, I hate blackwings and therefore will never play edison.
Tbh you shouldnt have just speedruned through the early 2018 extreme force/pendulum format.
This was before firewall combo stuff was prominent and there is a lot of creative deck building involved and tons of stuff historically topped. You could legit take graydle to regionals and do well or iirc burning abyss won a YCS. The only firewall combo deck that was there was world chalice, an actually pretty cool and creative deck that required tons of skill to play and the player who made it was a good deck builder. It's a format that should be reconsidered at least because there was a lot of goofy stuff running around and I had tons of fun during it. There wasn't a deck that just choked the life out of the format.
i disagree in that, it was also starving venom ftk format
@@warenfetischismus3649 yeah but it wasnt bad. Pendulum lost to 1 hand trap and if u interrupted their FTK somehow with a veiler or ash or droll or ogre or just about anything they didnt have any followup which is why some pendulum decks didnt play the FTK.
It's obviously not the best format ever but it had a lot of things playable, is unexplored and could be fun to revisit. Also there is a lot of creative deck building that went on at the time and can still probably be done, which is something you cant say about a format like goat.
i love Perfect Circle format, im very happy to see it gaining slightly more attention recently. and yeah i agree Starstrike should be explored more, its one of the few formats that has always looked very interesting to me but i have never really seen anyone talk about it or play it nowadays.
My problem with Delinquent Duo has been my issue with a lot of high price cards and that's if you need them for a deck, because everyone plays Delinquent, Graceful, and Pot, it makes playing it IRL a nightmare. I still need a Delinquent Duo and it's still a $20 card.
At least the saving grace is that (1) Duo is at 1 for much of its history, so you only need the one copy, and (2) retro format ban lists will never change, so that Duo will never get banned.
Critter format or yugi kaiba is what i use to teach brand new players the very basics, and you still learn things like card advantage, conserving resources, and getting reads on the opponent, all in baby steps. And its very nostalgic and everyone recognizes the cards.
But after a few games you gotta move up to goat format then edison. I still need to make a few tengu and hat decks for that next step up.
Perfect circle is my favorite format
Drinking game: take a shot every time he uses the phrase "a problem"
Yata format is legit so good that it's fun to play despite the hand rips existing
Really interesting discussion.
This is such a majestic video
Hats a really good format to build rogue decks, since games tend to be slower, but the power level is high if you get plays through. No heavy and peoplr not wanting to random mst your backrow helps slow rogue and not many main deck mst helps combo rogue.
100% agree
Interesting point on Zoo. Sorry im so late to the discussion. There is 2 formats post Maximum Crisis for Zoo. 1. Is Fusion Sub Zoo which is your YCS Pitt format and it was obnoxius. Fusion Sub combo wasnt just annoying, it was what introduced us into the era of playing 12+ hand traps in main decks which wasnt heard of prior. The NAWCQ format, was post Norden ban and was actually quite fun and skill intensive.
Chimeratech is actually a very diverse and mostly healthy format in between Cyber Stein and Crush Card Virus. The OTK is not an extremely consistent deck and people moved away from it. There are Monarch, Gadget and Control decks that make things very interesting, especially with Burn not being particularly good. It is definitely better then many of the formats in this video :)
I love Tengu so much, I kinda wish Edison hadn't eclipsed it so much in popularity 😭
I hate to say it, but 2 cards existing at 3 is what makes Tengu not as heavily played. And one of those 2 cards is hella expensive.
Ever since me and my friends got into Goat years ago, we’ve always played the Cyber version, mainly because I play Cyber Dragons in the TCG and played them as a kid so they’ve always been my main card.
I love Cyber Format, I stand by it and think it’s the best variant of Goat. Cyber-Stein becomes usable, I run a Machine-heavy OTK deck with Reflect Bounder, Cyber Dragon and its Fusions, Power Bond, Limiter Removal, Cyber-Stein etc. but I also play a Goat Control engine to grind game with if I can’t pull off a quick OTK.
I will admit I haven’t experimented much with any other formats that come right after and I’d love to try some that come right after Goat since they got rid of a lot of the big problems with Goat.
Watching chaos control sacking in cross banlist is still funny to see..
I think there's a weird focus on price and T0 formats for a look on *retro* formats. Those aren't the main factors in retrospect.
To be specific, the problem with Tier 0 formats in a modern sense is *that's what you're stuck with.* When it comes to retro formats, you have all the choice in the world. Tier zero retro formats should be judged primarily on how fun the mirror match is, because if you don't like that mirror match, you simply don't play that format. If you DO like the mirror match, you'll probably appreciate the format's consistency!
To be clear, I recognize the exceptions in this video - there is respect given to Dragon Rulers, for example - but you've still leaned too heavily on it, largely failing to explain why the TeleDAD, Six Sam, Dark world, etc. Tier Zero formats are bad in and of themselves.
We forgot YCS San Jose. I consider it an Edison format for the Arc V era. No Djinn, still have Construct, Kozmo is out, but it’s not as favored as clown blade. It’s fantastic
UDS Kissimmee 2017, post-Zoo hits, post-CODE, but pre-CIBR is a pretty cool format imo. Decode Talker was a card that was unironically used, and pendulum magician was a thing that was somewhat fair.
2:27:41 Where can I find the Thunder Dragon Crusadia Orcust decklists? Thanks 😃
I loved TOSS format. Would definitely revisit it and play it again.
And now we got the first retro format in the ocg announced: 2007 banlist, card up till february 2008...meaning phantom darkness and caius...
Windup format is actually way better than dino rabbit format. Shock lock is not nearly as toxic as handrip, future fusion, consistent dino rabbit. Windup format scales the best decks from dino rabbit format to where other decks can compete which is good for the format.
Wind Up format is rad. I don't understand why anyone would prefer Dino Rabbit Format. Every top deck at that time was degenerate. Laggia set five, Hand loop, Dragonfly combo, etc. absolutely miserable format.
I disagree. All the decks in DR format can be checked and very rarely do the big wombo combos go off without answers. Wind-Up format is really just Wind-Up + a bunch of other decks that are fighting to be a distant second.
@@kittycat2983 of course they can "get checked" you can main deck triple Maxx C and Veiler in both formats. The Wind Up format decks are just strictly weaker than their counterpart in DR Format.
@@feelingrizzly1515 strictly weaker which in turn makes the format more polarizing. Wind-Up is unequivocally the best deck in Wind-Up format whereas it seriously contends with 3-4 others in Dino Rabbit format.
And to your other post: I don't think many of the decks in Dino Rabbit are "degenerate" at all. Sure, you've got the Wind-Up loop but that's kind of it and that's only really a problem if it resolves which oftentimes it didn't. Laggia is a hard one time negate and Inzektors are an incredibly fragile deck. The majority of games won in DR format are through grinding out resources and making good plays and trades. That's just great Yu-Gi-Oh. DR gets a lot of hate towards it because people have this vision of what it was 12 years ago but the reality is that the format is diverse, plays well, and was the beginning of more intricate and complicated styles of play for the game.
@@kittycat2983 wind-up is by no means the absolute best deck in Wind-Up format. Just look at recent tournament results in Format Library.
2:29:22 where does "Sizzle" come from in Rokket Format in early 2020? Couldn't find any information about this name maybe its written wrong too idk
One of the best videos ever
This dude so good at articulating his words that he keeps me watching for hours😅😅
I loved that 2 weeks of CORE. I won 2 high level locals vs all meta with a homebrew igknight list.
Goat format came out when i was born lol
With how many broken formats there were right before TOSS and the rather hand-wringy... "I mean... I GUESS it's solid" it makes that entire era feel like the Master Rule 4 equivalent of that AVGN "IT'S NOT SHIT!!!" meme.
Exactly! Toss players don’t even decide which TOSS format should be played (April, July, September) 🤷🏻♂️
I'm so glad you made this
LAW MY BOY! awesome video bro
I feel like there is a decent few formats, that could be really fun if you could adjust them. In general there are 3 things I think could be done to most of the A tier formats to make them really fun: 1. Ban certain unfun staple cards like soul charge, vanity's and smoke grenade. 2. Give certain decks, that got murdered some pieces back. I bet you could make a really cool True draco Necros Zoo Pen magician format, if you can find a power sweet spot between them. 3. Legalize decks, that were released too late and never saw any play, because by the time they came out they were underpowered. Let flower cardians or weather painters loose in fire water format and see what happens. There are so many cool decks, that never got to be anything more than rogue or even worse, they deserve some shine.
I've been championing perfect circle format since its basically goats format diversity wise with none of the issues. Yeah a bunch of decks are probably gonna play some repeating stuff but that's almost all formats where there are repeating cards. People should totally figure more stuff out for it.
Yugioh would be such a good game if they just full restarted and implemented standard rotations.
OCG Goat format is the format I wish people played and trinity format (Shaddoll, quil and BA)
Is there a community for OCG goat? :0
@@el_cores sadly not many people play it.
@@PapiCitoI'm interested, do you have more information, I want to motivate my friends as well :D
whats the difference? im not knowledgable about it
@rapalborde5211 the ocg were ahead like 4-6months in sets and they had cards that we didn't get for years like blue eyes ultimate and other ocg exclusives
This was a trip down memory lane from September 11 to Spyral format, tier 0 spyral in late 2017 was what made me quit Yu-Gi-Oh forever, that format was so toxic and unfun that it made me not want to touch the game again, and im kinda glad i didn't other than retro fornats considering the chaos that happened afterwards
Great overview! Trying to get my gf into ygo step by step gonna pick a few formats you recommended to buy decks for us
Could you make a video investigating Fire Water format?
I started in Block Dragon Adamancipator format and somehow stayed with the game until Snake-eyes decided to choke everything else out
I honestly might try out Meadowlands and Clown after this, these seem really fun
Clown was great, can't encourage it enough!
Ruler formats are just top tier. Or rather, either top tier or unplayable, depending on what you like. But I without a doubt have played the most Yu-Gi-Oh around Tachyon and it was awesome and I assume it's even better now. I do feel like it has the perfect balance between 5DS and current metas, can do a lot of cool stuff and it doesn't take 20 minutes to do a combo, and as mentioned, very skill intensive
And I do think Rulers is the most fun deck of all time, I do feel sorry if you play/ed Spellbooks, you might be a bit autistic and/or masochistic
I actually really love the Mewdowlands format.
Fiber format which it seems like you missed is a format that also has 2 graceful and it is much better than joey-pegasus. Also i stand by the stein era formats actually being a lot of fun. Sure stein is pretty degenerate but it being around adds a fun mini game of getting your opponent below 5000 and while getting steind feels bad, the decks that rely heavily on stein brick pretty often and so plenty of decks play very minimal stein or no stein at all.
Solid recap of what happend over the years. I feel like you are a little biased to extreme diverse formats with to much hate against tier 0 and rock-paper-scissor formats but this is a pretty solid list. I guess i am biased aswell. I remember most of the formats but back in the day not everybody had the money for stuff like 3 DaD or 3 Tour guide so the actual offline metagame was a little bit different. Stuff like Tengu format without people running 3 tourguides in every deck was way better then the Tengu plant format now where everybody has 3 tour guides in their deck.
The Tengu plant format we played back in the day was a fixed version of Librarian format. This format was amazing with Librarian and Formula at one and Heavy storm back in the format. Normal Summoning Tengu, Rai-Oh or Tour Guide every turn is way more controlling then the metagame we faced back in the day. Junk Doppel plants were so much fun.
There’s no way Frog FTK format isn’t in the bottom of unplayable. And for the reasons you mentioned about Gravekeeper it has to be DREV>Starstrike
March 2012 format is also hot garbage. The wind up hand loop is why retro formats even emerged in the first place. The revival of Goat format came about because people hated the meta at the time.
Lastly I'm sure if Meadowlands was heavily played, I can't see a world where full power Mermail isn't definitively the best deck. I think one of the other closer Zexal formats like Fire-Water or Vegas might be the best one for the era. Agreed with you that HAT is overrated; Soul Charge is a card that shouldn't exist let alone at 3 and I don't find playing with/against the hyper control Artifact deck to be particularly fun.
The problem with DREV format is that it's pretty much just 'edison with less variety and sackier decks'. Duality/Warning largely concentrate power on the decks that were already good in edison (BW variants/Heros), and add Infernity (which literally no one is happy about). X-Sabers is the only actually positive addition, but you lose a lot of decks in the transition in favor of the pushed decks, and even X-Sabers is a little on the sacky side.
STBL is where new decks actually started to show up. You got Bulb, Karakuri, GK Recruiter, Tuning, Formula Synchron enabling Water Synchro, etc.
It's just a very mediocre format because it has no real distinguishing aspects. If you wanted a format with BWs/Frogs/QD/Plants, Edison is better. If you wanted Sabers/Infernity/Gks, play Tengu. If you want a late-stage synchro format with high diversity, it's worse than Edison or STBL format.
@@Floatstonemafia Well I think the point is because it's post-Edison but still has a lot of overlap with it, it's still a pretty good format. There's a few pros, namely 0 Substitoad and 1 Whirlwind. Imo GK is a toxic enough deck where despite the new decks in STBL, it's a negative play experience. What is a neg for both of these is the banning of Heavy Storm. The Sept. 2010 list was very controversial due to that. Agreed that there is no reason to really play either of these when you could just play Tengu Plant.
I have a soft spot for Six Sam format because of Over the Nexus, but yeah, triple Gateway was a mistake.
I wish ABC format was in Jan 17 to get the D/D/D structure deck in there
I know the whole thing is "play things as they were."
But: So many of these are one change away from being way way better... why not do it?
Edit: 2:01:15 So apparently some do...
Resume original comment.
I.e. play revised Cyber format where you just ban Cyberstein, which everyone agrees is a problem, and that the format would be better without it.
At least in non Konami events, there is nothing stopping people. Just label events extremely clearly:
"Insert format, X card banned"
Like, on Smogon, retro pokemon formats get banlist changes.
People are against it cause people want to play the format historically accurate.
@momiji236 I addressed that in the first sentence. But the "one big issue" in a bunch of these formats makes *a bunch of other people not want to play them.*
At the end of the day, I think what people want to play a lot of the time is "good Yu-Gi-Oh."
So it seems stupid to me for people backing Reaper or other formats with one big issue to not run events with the one big issue taken out. Except at official Time Wizard events, the fans set the rules. A small compromise would actually get more people playing the format.
Apparently, we even have empirical evidence that it works because the Nekroz format community decided Djinn needs to go and run events without it.
It is something to try.
There's also nothing stopping pure retro formats and slightly revised retro formats from coexisting.
"This event is Reaper format exactly as it was historically."
"This event is Reaper format, BUT Cyberstein is banned."
Heck, people sign up to play the weird "Goat" time wizard events with Cydra legal because to them, it's still appealing despite not being "quite right."
If the hand ripping spells were banned in treasure/earlier stuff, would they be fun?
Vrains was bad all the way until branded started to turn things around. Crazy how awful that era was.
TOSS was fine, im sorry you were losing to Striker :)
@@ShineyRcus0103 losing to striker was way more fun than losing to orcust or thunder dragon. That format sucked
meadowlands format is the last time i played ygo and i hope it becomes a third pillar so bad as a Former Ehero beat/miracle and dragunity palyer
Couple of comments:
STBL format is hugely underexplored and was incredibly diverse at the time. There were also other fantastic lists like Karakuri Machina Plant that were floating around too. The big turn off that format was the lack of heavy storm, but otherwise great. The only danger here I think is a runaway GK format, but I'm not sure about that, it's Saber MU wasn't great, frognarch might have been an issue , etc. It's one of my favorite formats honestly. Games ended up being pretty grindy due to the lack of heavy storm. I think it steps on Edison's toes too much to ever gain mainstream popularity, but I think it's actually a little better than Edison in a lot of ways.
STOR Six Sams were not tier 0 in the TCG, even with 3 gateway. Tier .5 ish. The format was awful, but it was a two deck format. Six Sams were the best deck, but GKs could keep pace, had a couple of advantages vs them, and could be built to anti-meta Six Sams. What ends up happening in that match up is a dick measure contest of who gets to stop the other person from playing, and whoever goes first wins like 80% of the time, but GKs could absolutely blow Six Sams out with a turn 1 Royal Tribute, and in general Six Sams had a hard time going second into GKs. The deck often struggled to get over a Necrovalley pumped spy, and Descendant was one of the few reliable outs to Shien. Everything else was meme tier against triple gateway six sams, but this works in GK's favor given that it bumped off a lot of GK's bad match ups. GKs could play the Spellbooks to Six Sam's Dragon Rulers - one is clearly a way stronger deck, but the one dumb thing the other deck does is just good enough to anti-meta the big dog.
Dino Rabbit/Chaos Dragons/Full Power Inzektors/WU hand loop was a horrifically bad format. Easily one of the worst in the games history. The diversity was the only thing somewhat redeeming, but it was immediately negated by all of the big decks being completely miserable to play against. Every single deck in that format was not trying to play yugioh at all. Chaos Dragons were trying to OTK you if you couldn't interact with them, WUs were trying to FTK you with the hand loop, Dino Rabbit was trying to stop you from playing at all, Inzektors were the closest thing to a fair deck, and that was a super, super messed up fair deck that turned one dragonfly in to leveling your whole board and generating xyzs.
WU Format is a hugely underrated format. Lots of cool stuff going on with the WU deck in general, and Dino Rabbit/Inzektors were much more interesting to deal with.
Bit disappointed to see no mention of nimble in the dragon rulers/mermail area as that was my pet deck at the time, but I suppose it just wasn't quite that good.
Get the popcorn out guys, this is gonna be a good one🎉🎉🎉
>Meadowlands over Tengu for "big 3" consideration
THANK YOU. Its not just BLS either, Dark Hole is also a washout card I loathe in TP. Meadowlands is the most balanced and open that Zexal has to offer and a true representation of XYZs.
Dark Hole is pretty damn fine in Tengu lol. Very healthy card, so much so I wonder how early they could have unbanned it and it have been fine. Almost certainly way earlier.
The real problem with Tengu Plant format is largely Maxx C, Monster Reborn, Dustshoot, BLS, Thunder King Rai-Oh. Those cards are the ones that create a large number of completely uninteractive games and heavily warp the whole format.
Nekroz Format is fine as long as you gentlemen side out Djinn but then side in your other copy of Djinn.
Happy to see my Boy Tengu Format this high 😁
Would love to see the same logic applied to the video games ranked by the "format" they "represent" lol
Post-Ishizu limits and Pre-Phantom Nightmare format thoughts in terms of its diversity?
Glad you put the tear mirror haters in their place. Never got to experience it in the TCG so it's a little different but the month that I got to play ishizu tear mirrors in MD was some of the most fun I had. Both players playing during each other's turns and trying desperately to stop each other from setting up or getting to Dweller. Shit would get to chain link 10+ regularly
Yeah Tear format is amazing. By far the most skillful mirror match in the history of the game, the amount of required brain power is just beyond any imagination. It's so hard to resolve chain link 10 correctly when you are not playing on a simulator. Anyone who is looking for a true brain exercise should try out this format.
It's a format that appeals to exactly Jesse Kotton and people who think they're better at the game than they actually are. "Skill intensive" also feels like a bad label to me since it tests skills that are a impenetrable frustration wall for 99% of the playerbase, not applicable to any other format, invalidate all decks that aren't Tear by nature of the mirrored mill, and have too much required tracking to not end up with procedural errors. It's not a good format, the mirror is a clusterfuck, and navigating an entire game's worth of interactions off the mirror mill isn't fun. The Ishizu monsters were gakekeepers in the same way Djinn was, but Tear has fart sniffing sycophants who think invalidating the entire rest of the card pool is fine because you need adderall to play it. Just like the Dragon Ruler mirror before it, everyone says it's the cultured man's Yugioh format but no one is going back to play it.
@@geek593THANK. YOU. I wanted to get back into paper yugioh around this time and absolutely just fucked off until mid-late 2023 after IshTear got hit and Kash got a vasectomy.
Yeah Tear Mirrors are mega fun. I can understand that outside the mirror the format sucked because everything else was so much far behind (which is a perfectly valid complaint tbf) but I also hate it when people just disregard the quality of mirror matches during that format.
Edison is close enough to Pelé's actual name, Pelé being that brazilian soccer player that arguably was the best ever at it. So it's fitting that Edison should be the best Yu-Gi-Oh format 😂.
That title belongs to Messi lol Pelé isn’t even Top 5 !
I dont see september 2012 format with psychics and grandsoil
Goat was great until people realized burn was one of the best strategies. Any format where burn is viable is not a good format. Nobody has fun playing burn or against burn.
I mean, if nobody has fun playing it (not against it, but actually piloting it), then it shouldn't actually be played, so someone must be having fun.
I do agree tho, burn really turns me off from Goats.
Burn matchup usually isnt that bad as long as u have sidedeck options vs it, burn usually has considerably easier time winning game 1 than game 2 and 3 cuz dust tornados and mystik woks come in vs it. actually can have some fun games vs burn still as well and the rescue cat burn builds especially actually take a bit of skill to play still. I wouldnt just dismiss goats outright cuz burn is playable.
Tengu format is way better than Edison. Having pot of duality tour guide reborn tengu etc. makes the rng much more consistent compared to Edison
Tengu is better than Edison.
I'm sorry but pretty much all of GX is unplayable or just dull. Trooper format is a sackfest.
Kind of sad format library doesnt even list OCG formats
Can we get some time stamps?
I own all ABC Format Decks and play it slot with friends. The decks are really fun but dim barrier is kinda ruining the format.
why can't yugioh players just "community ban" a card to make a near perfect format elite. its all retro anyway at this point
Because no one has such authority that the rest of the community should respect lol. You can make a gentleman's aggrement with your friend, but defaulting to the actual banlists of the time makes everything a whole lot easier. If a card makes a format awful, people will generally just not play it rather than waste their time trying to get everyone to agree on a custom banlist.
Goat not top tier is craaaaaazy. Perfect circle is almost top tier imo.
As a goat format master, I can say with 100% certainty that goats is HIGHLY over rated
Lets make Clown format big
it sucks that so many formats can be bumped up a tier or 2 with a few simple obvious fixes. extremely obvious problem cards like mystic mine and scythe and vanity and shock. just ban those cards. it's super easy.
I'm rather surprised you ignored the fact that DAD's first format, Gladiator and TeleDAD all had more than 1 emergency ban list come out....all three of which were because of DAD. Gyzarus was a problem in GB format but you do touch on how it wasn't the worst thing since it really wasn't. Even the crippling it did to DAD didn't help though...as TeleDAD would not only prove but make even WORSE. I was playing so much during those and well beyond and I very clearly remember especially when DAD first came out and TeleDAD having minimum THREE emergency lists, Tele iirc had what 4-6 by the end of it? They were awful but a lot more fun than a lot of other formats ironically, GB specifically when you were seeing Gadgets being used. Also Imperial is I'm sorry unplayable garbage...that's when Yata was hands down its worst despite Yata format being named after the silly bird. Most of these otherwise I'm in the same mindset as you XD
DABL Format is unironically GOATED. Water Spright, Tear, Bystial Nat Runick make a remarkably fun and skill intensive format.
The last good format we had. The game right now is pretty objectively not fun
Monarch format is the best format
Very solid tier list only big change I would do is put TOSS formant in S tier & chat calling tear the worst mirror is crazy it the best mirror
Tear 0 format was so bad it made me quit the game may be skillful but god it was sooo boring, link zoo was one of my favourites formats it actually had a very skillful mirror match but most importantly it was reeaaally fun to play
So basically because u couldn't get ur hands on the good cards in the older formats they're now in your opinion unplayable garbage...Gotcha
Teledad format is better than Edison from a modern perspective. Depth of field of decks is a representation of a bad format, not a good one. Still like Edison btw, but from any bit of competitive standpoint it's so annoying to play.
More decks playable makes for a worse format? You better explain why and you better have a good reason, because right now it comes across like "boohoo I only have room for five 3-ofs in my side deck I can't slot in cards to blow out every deck down to rogue tier".
@@maxmercurythemm827 When everything is viable, you can't plan for anything. Strategizing becomes a mess and it's just matchup fishing. It's so much more random because the things you will face is so much more random. Being able to viably play rogue is not the sign of a good format. I am not talking about casual btw, you can play whatever you want for any reason in casual play. I am talking about tournament play which there are a lot of tournaments for older formats.
@@N4N0_21 The key bit that you're missing is that this is a TCG, even when you play it competitively. TCGs are meant to have numerous viable decks at any given time, that's the whole point of constructed deck building with such a vast card pool. It may result in a "less competitive" environment overall, per your standards, but that is the expected compromise of competing in a TCG. If you really want to water down the variety so bad in order to make for the most equal, skill based competitive game possible, at that point you may as well just play chess.
@@Frogleeoh nowhere does it say that a tcg is supposed to have multiple viable decks at any given time. The yugioh TCG right now has a great format and there is really only 1 viable deck. I'm not against diverse formats, but to say diverse formats are good and tier 0 formats are bad is short sighted and dumb. Like I said, I like Edison, but it's not even close to the best format ever.
@@N4N0_21 Nowhere do I say that it is said anywhere that TCGs are supposed to have multiple viable decks. Rather, I was saying that it's the strong inherent implication of TCGs, hence the emphasis on personal deck construction combined with the vastly expansive card pool.
It may not explicitly "say" it anywhere, but, especially with Yu-Gi-Oh specifically, the core structure of the genre heavily brings with it the expectations of a varied environment.
Darkworld in tengu is actually bad.
Nah that deck is crazy strong and it's a good thing it's not allowed in most Tengu Plant Tournaments.
It's not quite as good as Agents/Tengu, but people have made that deck a lot better with the benefit of modern deckbuilding. The old versions were bloated messes running a bunch of cards you have no business running (any dark world monster besides beige/snoww/grapha/brow, sangan, fabled raven, not using upstarts/into the voids, etc), which is why it never topped. They were normal summon heavy, filled with a lot of gimmicky cards like mass discard normal summons and greedy cards like Reckless Greed. The modern, slimmed down, lean mean virus making machine is a total menace to the format.
It's the tengu equivalent of Dragon Turbo - it's probably not the outright best deck, but it's good enough and so frustrating to deal with that the format is way better if no one plays it. Tengu Plant just benefits from the most commonly used ruleset excluding it. But in the few tournaments that allow it to be used, it does win outright.
LoL dark world ban meaning it's not the true format @@Floatstonemafia